


All We'd Been Doing Was Sowing the Wind

by norgbelulah



Series: The Whirlwind [2]
Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Established Relationship, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Mission Fic, Multi, Past Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Threesome - F/M/M, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2017-12-31 23:55:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the events of the autumn and winter behind them, Ava, Boyd, and Raylan are trying to move on into a new spring, when a mission for more supplies brings the full force of Raylan's traumatic memories to the surface.  Will Raylan be able to leave the past behind him and find his place in this new world, as he struggles to return the love offered to him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to thornfield girl, scioscribe, and someotherstorm for betaing and great help with this fic, which I started over a year ago. I think the delay, and these lovely ladies' encouragement, only made the story stronger in the end.

Sometimes, Raylan will wake in the night with a weight on his chest.

He’ll wake slowly and with a smile and he’ll reach for his baby girl but she won’t be there. He will startle then, jerk all the way out of sleep, hands tangled in Ava’s hair where her head was resting against him.

The weight on his chest.

She will raise up her head and look at him with worried eyes and next to them Boyd will stir languidly and pull at one of their arms or bury his face in the pillow.

They sleep in a tangle now. It’s really the only way to do it. And sometimes Raylan will wake with a weight on his chest, and it should be lovely, but it’s never the one he’s yearning for, the loss he feels most keenly.

“I’m sorry,” she’ll say and he’ll try to smile. He’ll turn towards her, pull her to his chest, kiss the curve of her neck and bury his face there until he can sleep again.

If he can’t, he’ll pull himself from the bed and walk for a while, or go and listen to Loretta breathe, deep and calm in her sleep. It’s a welcome, comforting sound, after so long spent thinking she might stop her ragged breaths altogether. 

If he’s gone too long, Ava will wake Boyd, or he’ll go himself and find Raylan and walk or sit or do whatever he feels he needs to. They are careful of him, kind in ways he hardly expects, and it’s more than he deserves.

In the daylight, he tries to give them his thanks in touches and glances, in smiles when he can manage. At night, it’s in kisses and breaths and hot, clever fingers, that he conveys the gratitude he feels.

He gives everything he can and they never, ever ask for more.

 

He never says, “I love you.” Ava doesn’t kid herself he ever will.

They know he was never the kind of man who said it lightly, or often, and after everything that’s happened, to him, to them, to everyone, it no longer seems like a thing that’s vital.

Boyd told her about the night Raylan’s eyes went blank, burning with charred memories in the cold, wet ashes of his tiny fire. How Boyd called him back so slowly and how his hands shook on the matches. He told her how they didn’t sleep that night, how Raylan stared into the fire he’d forced himself to light and whispered, “I’m sorry,” once an hour, though Loretta was asleep at his side and Boyd had long since said, “It’s all right, Raylan.”

He stares into the fire more than she’d like, but they never talk about that night, Ava and him.

She never wants to see the spark completely gone from his eyes. She’s spent too much time trying to unearth it. She knows what buried it, she knows what he sees in the fire. She knows there is no replacing what was lost, but she can smile at him, and love him, and pull him into their bed until he can sleep the night through by their side.

He never talks about the baby and he never says the words, “I love you,” but Ava knows Raylan’s eyes are a mirror, more than most men, if you know the right way to look. 

She always sees the things he can’t say.

 

They’d thought he was dead. 

That’s what you have to assume, when there’s nothing but death all around you.

They never suspected he’d just come home one day, out of the clear blue sky, with a girl at his heel and the grimmest look Boyd had ever seen on his face.

From the first, Boyd knew it would take time. Raylan was clinging to a raft made of pieces of the old world, stubborn prejudices and healed-over scars and stuck barbs of a time to which they could never go back. There was no reason for him to distrust them, but he put steel in his eyes and only accepted what they offered because he had to, for the girl, for survival.

“You’ve got everything you’ve always wanted now,” Raylan said to him that first night, half-drunk on Benny’s shit ‘shine, undoubtedly because he hadn’t eaten properly in days, and couldn’t have drank a drop of alcohol for weeks longer.

“What’s that?” Boyd had asked.

He replied with a smile like a knife, the first one he’d shown Boyd since he arrived, jagged and terrible. “You got all the power, Boyd. You’re the goddamn King of Harlan County. I hope you’re enjoying it.”

Boyd frowned then and wondered briefly if Raylan had said that to get himself thrown out. Because really, he should have known better than to think Boyd would _enjoy_ the goddamn apocalypse.

His eyes kept falling to Ava, who was watching them, concern writ large on her face, and he scanned the room every few minutes, like he was waiting for the walls to close in or every last person in there to turn on him. His hand would drift to his hip when he spoke though they hadn’t yet given him his weapons back. 

“When did Louisville fall, Raylan?” The man’s eyes widened and Boyd added, “Tell me now, or I’ll put you both out.” He would do no such thing, but Raylan was thinking like before and he was still half-drunk.

“Summer, I said.”

“ _When_?”

“June,” he said in a toneless voice. “Mid-June.”

“It doesn’t take three months to walk from Louisville to Lexington, Raylan.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

They don’t talk about those three months. Not for a long time.

 

Raylan wakes in the night often. Mostly, he can’t remember his dreams and he’s happy enough with that. 

When he’s alone, or with Loretta in their place, he blinks away tears he doesn’t remember shedding and tries to calm his breathing. He drifts back to sleep counting breaths and shutting out the glow of the fire.

When he’s not alone, he counts Boyd’s breaths instead of his own and he pulls Ava closer. 

Sometimes though, tonight, the dream goes on and everything is fire. He’s much too warm, and he must be making noise because invisible hands, rough and strong, draw his head down and another pair, smaller, softer, wrap around his waist.

“Come back,” Boyd says softly and that can’t be right because Raylan’s eyes are open and all he can see is flames. But there are soft lips pressing into the skin at the base of his neck and those smaller hands are so tight. “Come back to us, darlin’.”

Raylan blinks and his vision clears. He stares into Boyd’s eyes, so dark in the dim light from the moon and the fire and Raylan starts and makes a low noise in this throat, something animal and sad. He hates himself this way, he wants to pull away but Boyd doesn’t let him and Ava is breathing steady across his back.

“Where are you, Raylan?” Boyd asks him, hushed.

His voice is choked, like he really has been breathing smoke and ashes. “Here. With you.” He couldn’t talk for a week after Louisville--he shudders--didn’t want to for longer.

“That’s right. Home. With us,” he says. “Stay with us, Raylan.”

Raylan never calls it home. But they make sure that he knows that’s where they think he is, finally. They never ask him to call it that. They never ask for more than he can give.

“Stay with us,” Ava murmurs from behind him.

He wants to. He never wants to go back there, but he can’t stop it. He could never stop anything. Boyd pulls him close, down to press Raylan’s face to his collarbone. 

Raylan falls back to sleep before he can say anything that won’t eventually be a lie.

He wakes to Boyd’s lips at his jaw.

He never in his life thought he could ever feel such a thing, welcome it, feel safe with it. 

Raylan smiles and Ava’s arm around his waist dips low. Her hand, warm from the heat of his body, still sends a shiver all the way through him when her fingers close around his cock. He feels Boyd smile right back, right into his skin, when his breath hitches loudly.

“You like that?” Raylan asks softly and he pulls Boyd closer. Their legs slide together. He can feel how hard Boyd is against him.

Boyd’s eyes are serious, despite his pleased smile. “You know that I do.”

Raylan has always known. It’s only now, when everything is shit except the little piece of heaven someone else carved out for him, that he can let himself believe it.

Ava’s hand is moving faster now, sure and smooth, up and down his length. He asks, “You just gonna watch me come?”

“No, darlin’,” Boyd murmurs. “We’re gonna watch each other come. You wanna help or you gonna leave it to me?”

Raylan reaches for him. His hands aren’t steady so Boyd guides him there. Ava’s going to town on him, pressing herself up against his rear, rocking a little, scrambling her legs up higher to get some purchase. Boyd’s eyes are over Raylan’s shoulder, they much be looking at each other, and Raylan’s mind flashes to a time when he didn’t think they were beautiful together. 

He can barely imagine that now.

Especially now that his hand is wrapped up in Boyd’s, moving together up and down Boyd’s cock. And not now that Boyd is making that noise, a choked back moan, a rhythmic, heavy breath, ragged and fierce. 

They lock eyes and Raylan’s vision is going white around the edges. His muscles tense and his back arches and Ava moves with him, “Come on now,” she groans and that’s it for him. He comes across her hand and across Boyd’s stomach and their hands, still moving. 

Raylan slides forward, spent and pressing closer to Boyd, whose own body is hard with that same tension. Boyd’s taking in more breath than he’s letting out and with every tiny exhale he’s whispering the word, “yes,” until he loses the rhythm and then his speech and Raylan pulls back to look in his eyes, like he said they would. 

There are lines around Boyd’s eyes, creases of light and laughter, the proof that what they have here is something good, something to be cherished.

He looks at Raylan like he’s the best thing he’s ever seen and they press their foreheads together as he comes. 

They kiss softly as Boyd heaves his sighs and his limbs fall loose and relaxed. Ava curls herself around Raylan, but he grins and twists, flipping her on her back so she can smile up at him. “You’re usually a lot more greedy,” he says to her, hands coming down softly on her thighs. 

Boyd is pulling her into his lap and Raylan spreads her legs. “Impatient, you mean,” he corrects.

“We don’t usually have all morning,” she answers, squirming now. “But Imma get real ornery soon, one of you don’t start touching me.”

Raylan bends forward and her eyes light up. She smiles as he says, “There she is, our Miss Ava,” and presses his tongue to her slick pussy. 

He knows Boyd is running his hands in circles across her skin, her breasts and stomach, her arms. He’s got his mouth against her neck and he’s sucking like no one’s going to see the evidence in daylight.

She tastes real good, like she used to when they screwed in Lexington, like forever ago and like tomorrow. Raylan thought he didn’t love her, but he can’t imagine that now because her hips are bucking up. She was already so ready for him.

Boyd’s got his hands on her arms, Raylan knows, tight and strong, and she’s twisting up, like they’re trying to hold something wild inside her. Ava calls his name, moans it, but he just keeps going, flicking his tongue in and out, all the way around that swollen little pearl. She comes like she’s laughing, cries breathed fast and light, and Raylan trails kisses up her thigh as he pulls away.

She draws him down for a kiss, then Boyd wants one too and Raylan loses his balance, falling between them again like they’d slept.

Ava gets up and goes to the tiny bathroom they have, where they keep a small tank of fresh water--the place does have plumbing, unlike Raylan and Loretta’s little shack, but the water hasn’t run in months. She dampens two rags and tosses one to each of them. They both watch her as she walks back, naked and lovely.

She catches them at it and grins. “You wanna go again, boys? It’s too cold for me to just stand here bein’ ogled.”

Boyd sighs and draws the rags across his stomach. “I do sorely wish that we could, baby,” he says. “But I got some matters to attend to this mornin’.”

She climbs back into the bed, sliding between them and taking Boyd’s rag when he’s finished. “Like what?”

Raylan props his arms up on his knees and leans forward to look over at Boyd. He’s got a feeling it’s the thing they only half talked about the day before. He feels a deep frown growing.

“I don’t like where we’re at with ammo,” Boyd told her quietly. He and Raylan had been talking about it a lot. Just the numbers, though, not what to do. “We’ll be okay for a while, but--God forbid--we get a horde like October again, we’ll have just enough or less and we won’t have enough shells for the launcher. We could be overrun.”

Ava’s lips are a thin line but she doesn’t hesitate when she says, “Well, we’ll just have to go find some.”

“That’s the plan,” Boyd replies. “I’ll get Amos and a few of the others from Harlan. They’ll know who might’ve had what holed up where. I got some ideas, but if we’re gonna go then we might as well take a few days, make sure we get as much as we can.”

Ava nods. “You know I don’t know shit about what crazy people were keepin’ their guns where and my aim ain’t as good as I wish it was. I’ll keep an eye on things here, all right?”

There’s a terrible sinking sensation in Raylan’s gut. He doesn’t really think about why until after he’s said, “I don’t think Boyd should go.”

They both look at him and he meets their eyes, first Ava’s, then Boyd’s, both distinctly confused. “Raylan,” Boyd says, “that makes no sense. I know where at least three of these caches are. I could tell you, I could tell anybody, but you might not find ‘em. And we need that ammo.”

“Yeah, I still don’t think you should go.”

Boyd’s expression goes from confused to cold in a matter of seconds and Ava opens her mouth, but Boyd leans over fast and gets himself in Raylan’s face before she can speak. “You have a good reason or two for thinking the way that you do?”

Raylan meets his eyes, knowing his own are going distant and dark. Ava shifts next to them, pulling away, not wanting to be in the middle of whatever this might turn into. “You’re the captain of this ship, ain’t you? You’re really just going to walk out of here? What if something happens while you’re gone?”

“Ava’s in charge just as much as I am, you know that. Try again.”

“You’ve been ill. You sure you can keep up on the outside. It’s been a long time since you been out, hasn’t it? Past 500 yards of the wall anyway.”

“That was months ago--”

“One month since you stopped looking like death warmed over.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say I’m not fit to keep up. You been inside for the winter as well. You think you’re just as fit as when you walked in here with your hands--”

Raylan doesn’t let him finish. His palm comes down hard across the back of Boyd’s neck, like Boyd grabbed him that night, the one when Boyd made it absolutely clear what it was they wanted from him, what they thought it was he needed. “I just,” he says carefully, but hard. His heart is pounding. “Don’t think you should go.”

Boyd jerks away and stands, saying, “Well it's a good thing this ain't a democracy, Raylan, or we'd have a real problem on our hands.”

He steps back and begins putting on his clothes like he’s mad at them and not Raylan. Ava doesn’t move, but she watches Raylan as though she’s waiting for him to say something else. He doesn’t have anything to add, so he keeps his mouth shut. 

Silence hasn’t always been his friend since he came here, but he falls back on it often regardless. There are places inside himself he wonders if he can reach anymore. When he needs to dig deep, he almost always comes up only with silence. 

Boyd, who’s had a love affair with the spoken word for most of his life, hates that. Raylan knows. Boyd probably hates it too because it’s an echo of the past; Raylan never used to speak in the mine either.

And because Raylan won’t speak, Boyd doesn’t either and he stalks out of the house without saying anything else.

Ava pulls the sheet up and around herself as she looks at Raylan gravely. “Honey,” she tells him, “you feel like saying something other than what's coming out of your mouth you should just say it. Go on after him and say it right now.”

He doesn’t, so he says nothing and he doesn’t move. His skin feels tight around his eyes as he just looks at her.

“You’re somethin’ else,” she says as she gets up from the bed. Raylan draws a shaky hand across his brow.

 

Boyd gathers his men together. 

Word spreads through the compound that they are going out. It’s something they’ve talked about before; the doctor has always asked for better medical supplies and there’s always a need for more clothing. But there’s never been a need like this before. They’d come here loaded down with weapons themselves and found a stockpile to rival their own. 

The plan is to collect whatever else of import they come across, but to only go to places that might be holding guns and ammunition. Ava thinks that’s just fine. They’ll be gone too long on the single mission as it is.

She can’t say she doesn’t agree with Raylan’s thinking, but she would never voice such a thing. Boyd has to go and she has to stay and Raylan should either shut his mouth or say what he really means. Though she supposes he’s decided to shut his mouth permanently now, since Boyd won’t listen to him.

Ava watches them avoid each other throughout the planning process, a two-day ordeal of closed mouths and hot and cold glares, and she tightens her jaw until her head aches. 

A day into it, she’s looking on as they start each of the three vehicles they’ll be taking, to transport whatever they’ll find, and check the engines for trouble. There’s little need to run them much, but they are started and revved up a bit every few weeks or so, especially in winter, so there isn’t much to worry about. 

Still, both Boyd and Raylan look grim-faced and too hard and Raylan’s still not speaking. It’s throwing a pall over the other men helping them and it’s casting speculation through the grapevine as people see something’s up other than the mission preparing to go out. As Ava glares daggers at them both from the doorway of the Barbecue, Loretta approaches her and takes a sidelong glance at all three of them in succession before asking, “What’s goin’ on with those two?”

“It’s a spat,” she says. They try not to talk about what’s between the three of them with just anybody, but Loretta is a special case. She’s family now.

“Raylan’s being an idiot?” There’s a funny little smirk on the girl’s face as she asks and Ava wants to laugh, but can’t quite make it.

She tosses her hair over her shoulder, straightening her back out and standing a little taller. “They both are. Raylan, I got a hunch about, but he’s not talkin’. Boyd just got his feelings hurt and he ain’t yet done licking his wounds.”

Loretta throws her an incredulous look.

“Yeah,” Ava admits the incongruity of such an idea. “He’s only ever like this about Raylan.”

Loretta snorts. “Well, that ought to tell you all a little something.”

“You would think,” Ava mutters.

She decides it’s better to be mad at them than to worry either one won’t come back. 

She’s not kidding herself, as Boyd seems to be, that Raylan will stay behind just because he says so.

 

Raylan is standing with Boyd’s men, the ones he hand picked, at the time set for their departure. He’s standing there like he belongs there, like Boyd told him to be there, when he expressly did not.

Raylan also did not spend the night in Boyd and Ava’s bed, which seems to have affected Boyd’s sleep in ways he’d prefer not to admit, and has left him feeling tired and irritable. More so, even that he has in the several days since Raylan stopped speaking to him.

Boyd has realized he probably shouldn’t have told Raylan the compound wasn’t a democracy. He doesn’t rule it like a kingdom or a tyranny--rather, they don’t rule it--so much as they pull it in the right direction. Most people who do important things know what the hell they’re about and don’t need Boyd or Ava to micromanage them, Raylan included.

Raylan should have had a lot more say in how this outing was organized and executed. It’s his job, the one Boyd fucking gave him, to coordinate with him on these things. But he stubbornly closed his mind and shut his mouth to the whole process, answering questions in as few words as possible and following direction with the stilted, belabored movements of a child enduring punishment.

And now, after all that, he’s standing in front of Boyd like he’s going to go.

“We haven’t packed food for you,” Boyd says as he approaches him, speaking low, so few can hear.

“Yes, you have,” Raylan replies stubbornly. The look on his face, however, isn’t as hard as it was the previous day. “Boyd,” he says, stepping into his space, “I have to talk to you about... something.”

Boyd looks over at the men, all of whom are watching them curiously, as though expecting a fight to boil up at any moment. “Can it w--”

“ _No_ ,” he grinds out, not even allowing Boyd ask the question.

Boyd puts his hand on Raylan’s too tense arm and pulls him further away from the men and the trucks. He looks worriedly at him. Raylan is white and his breathing, while not quite panting, is heavier than it needs to be. “Darlin’,” he asks quietly, “What--”

“It’s about what happened--after,” he’s talking in stops and starts, like he’s not sure what he’s saying, even after the words have left his mouth. “After Louisville. Right after Louisville.”

Boyd’s eyes widen and his hand tightens around Raylan’s arm. Raylan jerks away immediately and takes a generous step back. Boyd tightens his mouth and says, “Raylan, we don’t have to do this right now.”

“ _Yes_ , we do,” he bites out. “You need to know. Because--they’re out there.” As he says this, his eyes roam across the wall and out past it and he looks goddamn terrified.

“Who?”

He looks for a moment like all the breath has been sucked out of his lungs and he doesn’t have any voice left to speak. “I don’t know what you call ‘em here, if they come down this far, if--we heard people from outside say The Harvest came for ‘em and it took them so long to tell us what the fuck it was.”

Boyd shakes his head. “That’s a myth.” It has to be.

“It ain’t,” Raylan insists, breathing harder now, like something is about to come up behind him, swallow him whole. “I... met some. I--after they died.” He pauses at Boyd’s furrowed brow. “I was walkin’ out of the Downs. They were burning behind me and I hope to God Winona and--that they were burning too. I thought, maybe I’d turn right around, because I didn’t see ‘em--the building collapsed and I just didn’t want them to be... walking around... I think maybe I was just standing there, in the middle of the street, looking back at that fire and they rolled up, whoopin’ and hollerin’ about something but I wasn’t really listening.”

Raylan stares at the ground as he speaks, then on the horizon and the bridge at Boyd’s back. He won’t look at him and he’s still not within a distance that Boyd can reach. “They musta thought I was... a little crazy, I guess, ‘cause I was all covered in ash and-and blood and... I was laughing, I think. Can’t really remember why now--why I was laughin’--but, they asked me ‘you lose your way? You wanna ride with us?’ and I-I just said yes. Well, I can’t recall saying that either, I just... went with them.”

“Raylan,” Boyd says tentatively, glancing over at the men waiting for them. Boyd could only imagine the heartbreak, the trauma that Raylan is feeling at even speaking about this. He believes him, there’s nothing else he can do with a story like the one he’s hearing and his hands are burning to pull Raylan close.

“Darlin’,” he says, and when Boyd calls him that, Raylan’s face twitches, like he’s been stung. He keeps on, “Okay, Raylan, I understand. They’re not a myth, there’s no need--”

But Raylan shakes his head and he’s looking at Boyd now, staring at him, and his eyes have taken on this abject fear, like the last thing he has ever wanted to do, but the only thing he can imagine doing at this very moment, is finishing this goddamn story. “Boyd, they were--they--we rolled into the next town and there were maybe three, four families holed up on a farm. I don’t know how those people lasted so long on their own, but these men,” he said the word like he didn’t believe that's what they were at all, “they all started smilin’, like they was going to the fucking state fair as we got near and I was just looking, thinking about the fire maybe, or I don’t even know. I wasn’t paying attention, I didn’t listen to what they were talking about.”

“Raylan, don’t--” 

But he doesn’t allow himself to be deterred. “They burned it to the ground and they shot all the men and they raped all the women and I... watched them do it.”

“Raylan, you--”

“I did,” he says desperately. “I remember, I couldn’t--I didn’t _get_ it right away. I don’t know why. It was happening right in front of my face. They kept tellin’ me, ‘come on, man,’ ‘pull it out,’ ‘let’s go,’ and I looked at them for--I don’t know how long until I realized.”

“Raylan, you were in shock, you can’t have--”

“After that I tried to go for the leader, this fucking lunatic with bones all over his jacket--don’t know how I didn’t see it--but one of them got me in the back of the head and I dropped. When I woke up, they hadn’t bothered to tie me down. Don’t know what they were thinkin’. Maybe just that I was crazy and they were--fuck, Boyd, I saw... a woman’s hand, a severed hand, just thrown on the ground. It was right in my face when I woke up and I--I saw red. I heard the ones who were still alive, barely alive, crying and choking and I got up and my head was aching, but I found my guns--not theirs, mine--and I shot them all, I--”

“Stop,” Boyd demands finally, because Raylan looks like he’s about to keel over. He stares at Boyd like he’s waiting for some kind of blow or rebuke, but Boyd can only shake his head at him, saying, “You think you done wrong?”

“ _No_ ,” he answers immediately. “Not for them, but I-- I watched those women die, Boyd. I--just couldn’t think of what to do. I think that I thought, if I killed them that had done it, they would be fine. But that doesn’t make any sense, they’d cut off that poor girl’s hand. I watched her bleed out. And the other one, she couldn’t breathe. They’d kicked her so hard--”

“Raylan, that wasn’t you. It wasn’t you, did that to them and it wasn’t you who stood by--”

He shakes his head, looking down again. “It was, I just said--”

“No,” Boyd takes a step forward and catches Raylan’s shoulder, digging his fingers into his flesh until he looks up again, into Boyd’s eyes. “You know, darlin’, the human mind can only take so much. You know that, Raylan. You know about shock, stress reaction, they must have taught you about such things.” Raylan’s shaking his head, but Boyd doesn’t allow him to speak, saying calmly, “It does make sense, what you thought and what you did. It does in this context and you can’t judge yourself on the standards of the past or the goddamn normal. I cannot even imagine the things you saw, Raylan.”

Raylan’s arm comes up to grasp roughly at Boyd’s forearm. “Boyd, if you tell me not to go out there with you, I won’t hear it. You know that, right?”

Boyd does, but he looks Raylan up and down, at the pain visibly ravaging his face, at white skin, his thinned lips. “Are you sure you can--”

“Don’t even speak those words to me, I am telling you--”

“Fine,” Boyd grinds out. He looks back at the men. They’ve been standing here too long. “I’ll tell the men about... what you said. The pertinent information and--”

Suddenly the fear is back in Raylan’s eyes and he says, almost desperately, “Boyd, we meet them, see them, we even get a hint of anything like that, and we have to hunt them down and kill them. We can’t have them follow us back here and--we fucking _can’t_.”

“I know, darlin’,” Boyd replies. “I know that, I promise you.”

The sound of a polite cough travels across the yard from about ten feet behind Raylan and they both turn to see Ava standing between them and the men waiting with a range of expressions on their faces between bored and really quite concerned. “Is everything all right?” she asks.

Raylan turns right back to Boyd and says desperately, “Do _not_ tell her. Just the...pertinent information, Boyd, please don’t tell her about the rest.”

Boyd stares at him, dumbfounded. He almost asks why. He can’t imagine failing to share anything with Ava, but he thinks about Raylan and his life and his silence and his expression goes grim. “Raylan, I cannot promise you that. I’d apologize, but I’m not sorry and I do try not to lie to you. I won’t be party to your attempt to make less of these things that have happened to you. They are terrible and you need to face them.”

Raylan’s mouth is very small and he pulls away from Boyd, not with a significant jerk, that would make it clear there’s a problem, but pull away he does and he intones quietly, “Just because we’re screwin’, don’t mean you get a say in how I deal with my fuckin’ shit, asshole.”

Boyd tilts his head, looks Raylan up and down and sees there is color back in his cheeks and the resolve in his eyes that seemed to have faded over the course of their conversation has returned. He takes a breath, knowing he’ll have to keep Raylan angry to keep him going through the mission, at least right now. 

Boyd smiles, the one that gets Raylan either hot or bothered and replies, “I beg to differ. You think talk like that’s going to piss me off enough to back off? Well, you’re wrong, Raylan. When we get back, and I mean _when_ , darlin’, there ain’t no way Ava doesn’t hear about what you just told me. All of it. And I won’t presume to make you live through all that again by telling her yourself, but I will not be hiding it from her.”

Raylan just walks away. It’s about what Boyd expects. Ava catches his eyes as he’s stalking towards the men and the trucks and says again, “All right?”

“I’m going,” Raylan growls like it’s still up for debate. 

When Ava looks over at Boyd, he tries as hard as he can to keep the worry he’s feeling out of his face and nods, saying, “He is.”

Ava huffs impatience. “Well, everybody already knew that, baby.”

Boyd shakes his head. “It was something else, but it’s not a problem. It’s going to be fine. I’ll tell you when we get back.” He kisses her quick, but with all the feelings for them both that he can muster and, finally, walks towards the truck he assigned himself to drive out of there.

He hadn’t wanted to leave with much fanfare, feeling that the greater fuss was made, the greater fear those left behind would feel at the chance of their return unscathed. His extended conversation with Raylan had brought out more than a few onlookers to see them off, making Boyd feel as though he’d been pushed unwillingly onto a stage. It’s not something that bothers him a great deal--putting on a performance, however unprepared--but he feels also as if he’s already lost more control than he’d like over what will continue to be a tenuous situation.

He smiles, not too wide, at every look each man gives him and says, “We’re good. Let’s go.” then he grins and adds, “With alacrity.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raylan and Boyd leave the compound at Noble's Holler and discover some things neither were quite yet aware of.

He clenches his hands in his lap and keeps the rest of himself very still as they ride out of Noble’s Holler, like they’re just taking a trip down to town for the goddamn groceries. It’s surreal and Raylan feels helpless and he can’t stand it. 

He looks out the window and says nothing as they roll down the mountain.  
Raylan had never, ever, wanted to tell anyone what he’s just told Boyd. But he could only think of one way to tell that goddamn story and once he started, even once Boyd realized and tried to get him to stop, he just couldn’t. It was like he didn’t know how, like he hadn’t known what those monsters were, or what to do to help those women.

The first place they stop is, Raylan is pretty sure, Boyd’s rocket launcher supplier.

It appears the actual building, or garage anyway, that whoever held all his guns in has already been ransacked, probably by Boyd the first time around. They get out of the trucks and Boyd smiles, looking around like he owns the place.

Terence, one of the three or four young men left over from Limehouse’s days in charge of Noble’s Holler frowns for a second and says, “There ain’t nothin’ left here, man.”

“You keep yer mouth shut, boy, if you don’ know what yer talkin’ about,” Amos, the miner Raylan knows from when he and Boyd were working the deep mine out at Turtle Creek, says gruffly. “There’s obviously a stash ‘neath the ground.”

Boyd’s eyes flash. “Right you are, Amos. Right you are,” he says calmly. “But cut my friend Terence, here a break, now, all right? He weren’t raised when the gun thugs was comin’ for your shit. He don’t know that paranoia.”

Raylan almost laughs. If that were the only thing that boy knew of danger and fear and hate. If only.

He does smile though, because Boyd’s accent thickens when he talks to the old timers. It’s downright adorable. And for some reason he thinks of Winona, when she’d get so riled she’d drop her g’s like the rest of the population, instead of trying to hold on so tight to them like her yankee mother tried to teach her. Then he thinks of fire and he blinks it away and his head is sort of hurting like he’s stood up too quickly.

They walk around to the back of the property, behind the faded blue house, next to which the empty garage stands. Raylan walks with them, but he’s not carrying a shovel. Boyd must have directed them to do it, but he guesses he wasn’t listening. No one seems to care. Truth be told-- to borrow a standard line from Boyd--it was a fifty-fifty toss up in most people’s minds whether or not he’d even be on the mission. He supposes they think he’s just there for security. It is his job after all.

Raylan feels weirdly disconnected. He doesn’t like it at all, but he can’t really stop his eyes from wandering away from the men, from Boyd, and he watches the trees, the house to their left. He thinks about the man that lived there, if he had a wife, if his children were grown. If he died and then came back. If he’s roaming around putting his cock in women who don’t want it, burning down houses just like this one, like the one he had to leave.

Raylan tells himself Boyd wouldn’t associate with a man who would do such a thing. Then he thinks, someone must have associated with all of them, all those monsters, at some point before the dead rose. They must have been people, living and working and loving or some shit, before the world ended and they lost all decency and humanity. He wonders how someone does that and then he thinks of fire again.

He shakes his head. Blinks it away again.

Boyd is speaking, “...no, they’re not a myth. Raylan has seen them,“ and in the echo of those words, Raylan hears everything he’s not saying. Raylan is thinking about it far too much. Raylan is losing his shit. Raylan is a liability.

He knows no one is thinking that. Yet. He knows now he shouldn’t have come.

There is a low rustle coming from the trees to the right of where they’ve gathered together for this little chat. Everyone is focused on Boyd and no one turns but Raylan.

There are two dead just within the tree line. They are gray and slow and fucking dead and Raylan takes two shots in quick succession. He puts them both down and he feels a little steadier.

Boyd looks at him and so do the rest of them. Raylan just raises his eyebrows. 

“All right,” Boyd says, like he’s just decided something. Raylan’s pretty sure it’s bullshit. He just does that to make sure people think he’s still in charge, still in control. It’s admirable, it keeps a lid on things, but it doesn’t really help Raylan. He keeps his hand on his weapon.

“The cache is under our feet. I am certain of it,” Boyd tells them. “Let’s get to work. Raylan’s on watch.”

And watch Raylan does.

 

When Raylan sees all the guns they uncover, after digging about three feet into the Harlan clay, he’s taken back to a time when he thought the United States of America might need stricter gun laws.

In the past year, he’s had more than one conversation about how happy people are that right-wing nutjobs had still been so plentiful before they rose. Raylan could never quite pull such a one-eighty on the whole issue, so he looks at those guns, racks and racks of them, and lets out a sigh.

“Whatcho poutin’ about, Marshal,” Kincade, a 30-ish shitkicker Boyd had picked up somewhere during the time in which Raylan hadn’t seen him and the world ended, asked him with a cocky grin. 

The boy was pressed in the same mold as a Dewey Crowe-type, but nature seemed to have improved a bit on his smarts and his ability to keep his jaw from hanging open and flapping around too much. He did seem to live under the impression that he was hot shit and the only person smarter in the whole compound was Boyd himself. Raylan has been working hard at rectifying that situation.

“Hard to beat twenty years of training, son,” Raylan finds himself saying without thinking too much about it. The words feel sort of slow coming out of his mouth, but no one seems to notice, besides Boyd, whose eyes are sharp, but mouth stays silent. “I see this and all I can think about is the paperwork.”

Jerry, the last member of their tiny crew and a former shopping mall security guard, smiles and says, “I hear that.”

“Oh, like you ever found a hole full o’ guns, Jerry,” Terence grouses, rolling his eyes.

Raylan shrugs, saying, “It’s really just the idea. I don’t think I can say I ever found one either. Not like this.” The thing is dark at the bottom. It goes down deep, like a mine shaft.

Boyd laughs quietly, “Only in good ol’ Harlan County.” He climbs down first.

Raylan stands watch.

 

They load all the guns up into the first truck, Raylan lets Amos and Jerry take a break from lifting every so often, having either one of them stand watch in his stead for a few relays back into the hole. It’s not a post he feels comfortable giving up easily, but he does when Boyd asks him to, with as little reluctance as he can manage.

He feels Boyd’s eyes on him and knows he’s being felt out. He tightens his jaw and gives him a look that dares him to voice any doubts. Boyd just smiles at him and Raylan goes even more tense, like a clock being wound so it’ll keep time properly. Raylan knows what he’s up to.

They get a minute alone down in the hole, pushed up close together because it’s only about four square feet wide. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing?” he asks Boyd quietly.

Boyd just smiles again.

“You think, even when I was comin down here from Lexington every other week, trying to figure what you were up to, I didn’t know you were winding me up? Tryin’ to knock me off your tail with how pissed off I was at you?”

Boyd’s eyes goes a little dark at the memory, like thinking about it takes him back there. Maybe it’s Raylan’s imagination. “Worked, didn’t it?” Boyd asks in a tone just a shade darker than his eyes. 

Raylan sort of wants to jump him. He picks up three rifles and climbs out of the hole instead.

Boyd takes another minute to come up himself.

When he does he’s got a big grin on his face and a bottle of something clenched tight in his hand. “Take a look at this boys,” he says, pleased as fuck.

It’s a bottle of Wild Turkey, unopened, undamaged. Raylan hasn’t even seen a full bottle of anything in six or seven months, hasn’t had something like bourbon for longer.

“Jesus Christ,” Amos murmurs and he’s followed by a whoop from Kincade and a few other curses from the others.

They all look at Boyd expectantly and he takes a step back, smiling still. “Now, now,” he says patiently. “We got a job to do. Can’t be partaking of such a thing as this prematurely. Tell me your women, your friends, ain’t gonna be pissed we found this treasure and opened it up without them. Thing like this, deserves a party, boys. We’ll have one when we get back.”

Raylan shakes his head, draws a finger across the brim of his hat and looks down in amusement. Seems like these days, Boyd wants to throw a party every time the damn thing falls off his head.

“Goddamnit,” Amos snaps turning away and the others grumble, though they do listen.

It takes another hour to load the rest of the ammo. Raylan keeps watch the whole time and doesn’t see any dead.

He doesn’t see the other thing either.

 

They drive on, after Boyd’s supplier, to another place, a cabin out near one of the State parks, near the border. Raylan gets out of the truck and takes a good long look around.

He’s been there before. This was one of Bo Crowder’s places. He’s been here twice.

Once, when he was young, Arlo dragged him here while Mama was staying up in Noble’s Holler. He was too young to be by himself, he remembered, so it might have even been the first time Mama went up there. Arlo had pulled him up to the porch of this place, rough, his hand clamped hard around Raylan’s arm and Bo Crowder had walked out the front door with two beers in his hand. There had been more men in the back.

They took him inside and it seemed too dark, like they’d drawn all the curtains, though they were miles from any other people. Arlo gave him a cup with something in it he said was medicine, but even then he knew it was bourbon. He took three gulps fast like Arlo said before he choked on it and fell asleep on a ripped up cot in a room like a closet. In his dreams, his mother had been screaming.

He’d forgotten about it until Boyd took him here when they were off shift from the mine, looking for something to do to kill the time, and then it had come out of him in a weird rush, remembering as he spoke.

Boyd had looked at him and said, “This is where they break legs, Raylan. I shouldn’t have taken you here. I apologize.”

Raylan never asked why they’d gone in the first place.

Later, he sort of wondered, but then he’d lost his chance to ask.

Boyd crosses the yard and Raylan’s eyes follow him. He doesn’t really feel like digging it all up again. Not today. It was a different life. He felt like a different person altogether, especially today.

“We won’t even have to dig this shit up,” Boyd is saying to the others. “I just couldn’t get out here before.”

All the guns and ammo are in the crawl space and the closets, just locked up with some chains around the door handles. The chains are rusted out and it only takes a strong yank to get them open. Raylan finds himself staring into the closet he’d once laid in, thinking not really much of anything, for probably longer than he needs to.

He startles when Boyd comes near him, hand gentle at his elbow. His own hand goes to his weapon. He feels as though he’s just snapped the leash of something wild, collared it only just fast enough.

Amos passes him with boxes of ammo piled high in his arms. The room isn’t very big and he squeezes past them both saying, “Little jumpy today, ain’t you, Givens?”

Amos never calls Raylan by his first name, or even Marshal, like some of the men and women he puts on the wall. Raylan couldn’t really care less what he’s called by anybody there. He isn’t really a marshal any longer anyway, but something in the way Amos says it, and in the way Amos watches him now and then, puts him in mind of the mine and how he just knew half the old timers there thought he was going to crack. 

He looks at Boyd and wonders if he thought the same thing. He’s much closer to the brink right now than he ever was in the mine. 

“Why did you bring me here that time, Boyd?” Raylan asks a moment later, when they are alone again, the closet is empty and the others are around the back, cracking open the outer door to the crawl space.

Boyd doesn’t hesitate. “I wanted to get you drunk and talk about that thing we never talked about.”

Raylan smiles. That thing. They still hadn’t talked about it. “I kind of figured that’s what it was,” he says shaking his head. “You know, even if you had got me drunk, I think I would have just punched you and tried to walk myself home.”

“It’s twenty miles, Raylan. Over the mountain--”

“And through the woods, yeah. You surprised?”

“Not terribly,” Boyd shrugs. There’s a soft smile on his face. “After you told me that story, I knew it was the wrong time and I realized, if you told me about this place and you still didn’t want to talk about,” his eyes flick away from Raylan, “that other thing. Wasn’t nothing I could do to make you.”

“Not then.”

“And now?” Boyd’s looking at him again, almost hopeful.

Raylan sighs, thinking about it, about the night in his truck, parked out under the stars. He thinks about how he hadn’t realized what he wanted until it was happening and how badly he wanted it had scared him so much, he had to push away. He’d seen fear in Boyd’s eyes too and he’d used it as an excuse to say, “this never happened.”

Of course it had, but now it was another life behind them, two even. 

“Well, Boyd,” he says finally, “there’s a few things you could do to make me, but I don’t think I’d appreciate them. How about you just give me a little more time to think it over?”

“You’ve had twenty years, Raylan.”

“I gotta think about now, I have to--”

Boyd’s hand comes up to his cheek and Raylan’s eyes shoot to his, automatically. They are very open and wide with not quite concern, but sympathy, and uncharacteristic confusion. Boyd’s expression stops his words in their tracks.

Raylan realizes in that moment that Boyd’s trained him to respond that way, to look at him. His touch prompts that directness, that honesty and truth. But it doesn’t make Raylan feel used, or manipulated. He should feel like a dog or something, inferior, but he doesn’t. He feels loved.

“What is it that you have to think about?” Boyd’s searching his expression for something. “We can just talk, Raylan. I swear, we don’t need anything--”

“I can’t give, I know,” Raylan finishes. They’ve been saying that from the beginning. He knows, he _knows_ though, that they want more. He doesn’t know if it’s still in him, the ability to show them, to echo back the love that they keep throwing at him. Maybe it was burned away. 

So, he hasn’t allowed himself to think about whether or not he wants to. He doesn’t think he could be with them if he did want to, if he needs, and then finds he can’t. He really doesn’t want to leave. “I can’t _just talk_ ,” he says with some frustration.

Boyd smiles, like something’s funny, and Raylan suddenly wants to pull him close. He’s never done that, not before, not since they started this up either. Whatever he’s done, it’s always been prompted by Ava or Boyd. He wants to, but he can’t. He feels sick.

“Raylan,” Boyd says with real concern in his tone, but Raylan can’t hear it. He pulls away and turns, striding out the door.

“Man, took you long enough,” Kincade whines from the back of Boyd’s truck. “Everything’s all loaded up. “Where’s Boyd?”

“Comin’,” Raylan growls, not looking at any of them. He climbs into the truck Terence is driving and looks out into the woods, he keeps his hand on the holster at his hip.

When Boyd comes out, one last rifle in his hands, like he spent all that time searching for it, they roll out. They camp in an open field, so the watchman can see the dead coming from a long way off, and they don’t have a fire. Raylan lays down in one of the truck beds in a thermal sleeping bag. Boyd, along with Kincade, opts to sleep on the ground.

 

Raylan doesn’t sleep. His mind wanders through the past for three hours as he lays on the hard plastic bed, through weird shit like the sound of the ceiling fan in the hospital in Nicaragua and that conversation he and Winona had about lion tamers when they were still staying in Gary’s house, before she left, before Gary ended up dead, before--

He gets up and relieves Jerry maybe a half hour early. The man looks tired and grateful. Raylan pulls his coat tight around him and lays the shotgun that’s usually slung across his back on his knees.

He watches a dead man walk about halfway across the field, waiting for him to get into range. He thinks about taking the thing with his knife, but they’re out too far out to risk an injury. He takes the shot and wakes only Boyd.

Boyd looks at his watch--the pocket kind that’s wound and doesn’t run on batteries, Raylan’s never asked him where he got it-- and walks over to where Raylan is standing, shotgun pointed to the sky. “It’s a little early, but I can relieve you,” he says.

Raylan shakes his head. “I won’t sleep anyway.”

“Well, at least give me the gun. It’s my turn on watch, Raylan.” 

Raylan hands it over and sits back down on the ground. 

Boyd follows him, laying the gun across his knees just like Raylan had. “It’s funny,” he says after a few minutes of silence. “Only one or two at a time all the way out here.”

Raylan shrugs. “No cemeteries,” he murmurs. “No battlefields, no hospitals. Just where they were put down. Just the ground and the shafts.”

Boyd stares out into the trees. “They climbed up out of the shafts when they rose. Just pulled themselves up out of the ground. I saw the Nealy’s, the ones used to live in Ava’s house. They lived there for generations, all buried in the garden. They must have taken out the gravestones when Bowman bought the house. They were thrusting their hands and pulling their decayed bodies from the dirt. We...we didn’t know then, what was going on. It was...”

“The most terrifying thing you’ve ever seen,” Raylan finishes for him. They’d never talked about this before. “I was driving to Louisville. I was... supposed to take the baby for the weekend. I’d just started doing that. I was on 64 West, coming into the city and I saw the military vehicles first. And I thought, ‘what the hell’ and then there was this man, just walked right out onto the highway, like a half mile ahead of me and half the cars slowed, but this one just kept going and hit him. Not--not like right over though. It got his leg, almost out of the way and it--it snapped, right off and he kept trying to walk. And then I saw the others. I hit maybe five or six before I got off that highway.”

Boyd’s not looking at him, but it’s only because his job is to watch the trees. “But you found them,” he says. “That’s... extraordinary.”

“I looked for days,” Raylan tells him. “I went from compound to compound. It was easier with the badge, but not by much. They wanted to keep everyone locked down. I know why, but... I nearly shot a man, wouldn’t let me through.” He remembers he was wrecked over it afterwards. He remembers being horrified by the lengths to which he’d go to get back to them. He stopped feeling that after a while.

Raylan puts a hand over his mouth. “I’d never felt such relief in my life, as when I saw her again. That little girl, Boyd. You can’t imagine.”

Boyd’s eyes do flash to him now. He hadn’t meant it to come out like an accusation. But Boyd must see that in his expression, even in the dark, because he makes a face like Raylan’s given him some kind of gift, but it’s the most bittersweet thing he’s ever received. “No, Raylan, I can’t.”

“I stayed away--out of Harlan--because of her.” Raylan’s not sure why he says that. It’s not like he ever went there just to see them. There was always the law bringing him in, that thin line they were on opposite sides of.

“We figured,” Boyd replies, like the conversation was entirely reasonable. “You didn’t come for Arlo’s funeral.” They haven’t talked about this either.

“I’d already been to Blackburn that week,” Raylan replies flatly.

Boyd just nods. He doesn’t offer any further information.

They sit quietly for maybe an hour and Boyd watches and so does Raylan, but sometimes he closes his eyes and doesn’t open them until he thinks of something terrible. It doesn’t ever take very long.

Boyd looks at his watch after a while and then stands, handing Raylan back his rifle. “I’d best wake Kincade,” he says as he stretches tight muscles.

“Don’t bother,” Raylan says. “I won’t sleep, Boyd. Let him--”

But Boyd just walks away, slipping quietly through the camp and stopping at the sleeping bag on the ground near his truck. He shakes the man awake, says something too soft for Raylan to hear, then walks back. “I saw you blinking, Raylan. Even if you ain’t sleepin’, you’re not fit for watch. Come here.”

He bends and pulls Raylan up by the meat of his upper arm. He draws him past the two other trucks, around to the front of the one Raylan had bedded himself down in. He presses Raylan into the front grill, stepping up close before Raylan can even think to stop him.

Boyd kisses him with all the confidence he possesses in his own bed, by his own fire. He is warm and insistent and Raylan, who’s spent so much of the day pulling himself away, stiff and rigid, loses the willpower to fight him any longer. His one concession for common sense is a breathless question. “Won’t they hear?”

Boyd smiles into his lips. “Not if you’re quiet.” His hands are at Raylan’s belt, slipping the leather from the buckle deftly, fingers quick. “You can be quiet, can’t you?”

Raylan nods and draws his lips across Boyd’s jaw as Boyd’s hand rubs him through his jeans. Raylan groans, but Boyd shushes him at his ear and his hand rocks harder then slips down past Raylan’s waistband and his boxers to close around him. 

Raylan cranes his neck to put his lips on Boyd’s because he’s about to yell and he knows he’s not supposed to. Boyd obliges and their tongues slide in and out of each other’s mouths, lips smacking and teeth knocking while Boyd works him. He sucks Raylan’s bottom lip between his teeth just as his pace peaks and Raylan arches, pulling his mouth away so fast Boyd has to clamp his free hand over it as he comes. 

It leaves Raylan all in a rush and he falls to his knees, making Boyd take a step back, staggering under his weight. They just stay there for a minute afterwards, catching their breath, Raylan pressing his face to Boyd’s stomach, Boyd’s hand combing through his hair.

“You’re gonna be okay, darlin’,” Boyd murmurs.

“Shut up,” Raylan thinks he says. 

After that, it takes him a minute to get back on his feet and straighten himself out. Boyd kisses him softly, eyes very dark in the moonlight, before he walks back around the truck and goes to sit with Kincade for a while.

Raylan pulls himself up onto the truck bed and into his sleeping bag and doesn’t once think of dead things or fire on his way there. 

He doesn’t dream of them either.

 

They head out early and Raylan feels tired, but better than the day before. He watches the road still, but he’s not paralyzed, he no longer feels a sensation of falling away while he’s doing it.

They drive across the state line this time, into Virginia, to a place Boyd says he’s only heard of, never been to before. Kincade tells them before he fell in with Boyd he was working with a boy who used to get weed sometimes from the place via a family connection, but he got caught going over the line with it and went up for Federal time and so Kincade hadn’t been in several years.

The man who owns the place is an anti-government, right-wing, survivalist-type, who’s also probably a bigot, but he does grow weed. Raylan smirks as they come up the dirt drive to a tall fence with a ripped open gate.

They get out of the trucks to pull back the heavy iron wreckage so they can pass through and as they do Raylan asks darkly, “Guess the survivalist didn’t survive, huh?” Boyd shoots him a look. “What, you guys go to tax evasion camp together or somethin’?”

Amos laughs at that, so Raylan doesn’t feel too bad when Boyd just rolls his eyes and walks on. 

There’s a huge display of weaponry in almost every room of the man’s two storey farmhouse. Shit is tucked away in closets and cabinets and in the basement too. They walk through the place carefully, on the lookout for trapped dead or squatters, though there doesn’t seem to be much food around.

Boyd surveys the place with a cool eye, but Raylan can tell he’s looking for something he hasn’t yet found. “What?” he murmurs to Boyd as they come up from the arsenal of a basement. 

“The launcher shells,” Boyd says, then turns to Kincade. “You said you were sure he had some.”

“Yeah,” the boy says, “but like, Boyd, this guy was crazy. Bobby told me he had way more than just this shit. Big stuff, machine guns, launchers and shells, I swear. They must be somewhere on the property. Can’t keep that shit in the house.”

Boyd considers him. “I suppose not.”

“Unless your friend was just talking shit to impress you,” Raylan says.

Kincade’s expression darkens, ready to defend himself, but Boyd interjects quickly, “You have any idea where such a stash would be on the property?”

“There’s a barn on the back acre. In it or under it, I’m thinking.”

“Make it under,” Amos huffs. “This guy’s a goddamn nutjob.”

Terence groans, “Can’t wait for more digging.”

“Naw,” Kincade assures him. “This guy was a fatass too, he’ll have a trap door or something. He was real proud of all his shit. Liked to show people. How do you think Bobby found out about it?”

“Well, let’s load up as much as we can from the house, then go lookin’ for this mystery stash, all right, boys?” Boyd says smiling. Raylan takes a few weapons off the wall and follows Boyd out to the trucks, but he stays there as the rest go in and out, keeping watch for dead coming out of the trees.

When they bring out and stow away as much as they can, leaving room for Boyd’s launcher shells, all six of them walk back through the property together, looking for Kincade’s barn.

They walk through an overgrown backyard and through a few trees, weapons raised and senses alert. The structure itself isn’t hard to find, but Kincade makes them slow to a crawl once they reach it, saying, “This assole was real proud of his security, too. We got to keep an eye out.”

“What do you mean?” Jerry asks. “Like booby traps?”

“I think so.”

Amos grumbles, “Well, do you think or do you know, son? Seems it might be a bit important.”

Boyd steps in again with, “Well, boys, why don’t we just stay vigilant and take things slow now.” Raylan wonders if he ever tires of being the peacemaker, the arbitrator. “Terence, Jerry, keep your eyes on the floor for trip wires. Amos, Kincade an’ me, we’ll take the walls. Raylan, watch our six.”

Raylan loves it when Boyd uses military jargon on him. It’s something wholly different than when they were young, or when they were older in Harlan. It makes Raylan think of the boy Boyd was in Kuwait, just a bit older, dealing with a world, a place, not his own. It’s no surprise to Raylan that he falls back on it now.

He looks at Boyd now--maybe for a few moments too long since he’s supposed to be watching their six--and feels a twist of something in his chest, an old feeling that makes his heart beat faster. Boyd is staring at the wall to his right, watching, and he raises a hand, prompting them all to stop their slow progress forward. “Here,” Boyd says, motioning to an indentation in the steel-lined walls of the building. “Something’s set to pop out of here. Is there a trip? On the floor?”

There’s no wire, but there is a slightly raised raised tile. A button that if stepped on would trigger it. They trip one on purpose and--after a polycarbonate arrow shoots out of the wall and clear across the place, imbedding itself deep in the opposite wall--they find that the mechanism just racks another in to shoot. There’s no telling how many lie in wait.

“I bet that asshole just _loved_ scaring people with this shit,” Amos says.

“We’ll just have to be careful of it,” Boyd tells them. “Watch your feet and watch the walls. You heard the noise it makes. You hear that, wherever you are, you duck, all right?”

Everyone agrees and they keep going.

The shells Boyd is looking for are under the floor, like Kincade said. There’s also a dead man, a fat one, lying in wait for them at the bottom of the stairs. It’s got a broken neck and glassy eyes and Raylan finds himself laughing after Boyd shoots it in the head. At his questioning look, Raylan laughs harder, saying, “You don’t think it’s ironic? Fallin’ down the stairs just at his big chance to _survive_ the apocalypse?”

Boyd frowns at him as Kincade says, “You don’t know how long he lasted.”

“Think he’d be so fat if he’d lasted longer than it took him to figure out what the fuck was goin’ on?”

Terence shakes his head. “That’s grim, Marshal.”

They get the shit they need, stepping carefully over the limp body of the fat man and the black blood pooling around its head, then leave, taking the same precautions they did on the way in.

It all takes far too long for Raylan’s liking. After the shot that Boyd took at the dead man, he’s feeling a little less steady and he’s pissed about it. It wasn’t any different than the shots he took himself yesterday. The corpse was at least eight feet away from any of them as they came down the stairs. Raylan would have put it down himself had Boyd not yelled out first that he’d get it. It was over fast and clean, but Raylan still feels something dropping, low in his stomach, like there’s a deep chasm opening up and sucking down all his insides.

He’s not prepared then, as they’re walking back through the trees, to hear a sharp, loud, snag and a snap and Boyd’s shout of, “Everyone back up,” before something grabs him--grabs Boyd around the ankle and pulls him up fast into the air. A snare of some kind, stringing him up.

There’s a gasp and a curse or two from some of the others, but soon it’s followed by laughter, because Boyd is fine. He is. But Raylan’s just staring at him up like that, upside down in the air, held up by a tree branch and a thick rope. He feels everything falling away, sucked down into that darkness and he thinks, it might not have been fine...if it wasn’t...it wasn’t and soon he can’t breathe.

“Get me down,” Boyd is saying. Boyd is saying that and spinning around, looking at them and flashing a good-natured smile, in on the joke. But Raylan can’t breathe because everything feels like it’s spinning down and it’s not a joke, if it wasn’t fine, it could have been--

“ _Raylan_ ,” Boyd says, but he’s not near enough to touch him, so Raylan’s looking at his ankle instead of his eyes. It might be at a weird angle, could it be broken, fractured, what would they do if Boyd couldn’t walk, if Boyd--

Someone lays a hand on his shoulder, but it’s not Boyd and he jerks away, as if stung. “Don’t touch him,” Boyd cries. “Damn it, cut me down, _now_.”

Raylan can’t see anything but that rope around Boyd’s ankle and his vision’s starting to gray around the edges. His whole body feels numb, or not even numb, like it’s just not there, like he’s nothing but a single phantom limb.

“Raylan, I’m fine, all right? I’m fine. Look, please. Raylan, _breathe_ ,” Boyd cries. “You’re going to pass out.” And there’s the sound of a branch snapping and a sawing of fibers and a dull thud on the ground. Then Boyd is there and his hands are at Raylan’s face, but Raylan can’t see him because his eyes are rolled back in his head or they’ve gone glassy like the dead. Raylan falls to the ground and Boyd goes with him, kneeling and calling his name some more.

When Raylan can see again, blinks fast to chase away the gray, he looks into Boyd’s eyes, clear and wide and worried, and just starts talking.

He’s not even sure about what, because there’s this roaring in his ears that he hadn’t noticed before, or maybe it just started, because he’d heard everything else perfectly well, better even than usual. And maybe he’s talking about that, but soon he’s pretty sure he’s just saying, “I can’t, I can’t, Boyd,” over and over again. Or maybe it was “You can’t.”

Either way, he doesn’t stop until Boyd pulls him close, pressing his lips to his forehead and saying, “Raylan, I’m fine. I’m not hurt. Okay?”

“I know,” Raylan forces the words out, shaky and breathy. “I can’t--can’t stop it.”

“Okay,” Boyd says and drawing his mouth to Raylan’s temple. It’s welcome and soothing in a way Raylan can’t understand. “We’re gonna work on this. We’re gonna fix it, I swear.”

And that makes Raylan feel better, for some reason. 

Maybe because he knows Boyd is generally good at fixing things, or at least making things the way he wants them. And that would be fine. Raylan can be the way Boyd wants him for a while. He’s spent so long already trying not to be, it’ll be a nice change. Something good. The world is different and so is Boyd, Raylan doesn’t have to be the same as always. 

Maybe all this is happening because he just can’t be anymore.

When Raylan can breathe again, though just barely, Boyd gently breaks away from his vice grip and stands next to him, like he’s getting ready to halt an onslaught. Raylan looks up and into the confused, concerned, and perturbed faces of the rest of the men.

“What the absolute fuck was that?” Kincade asks first, seemingly to the general assembly.

Amos ignores him completely, speaking directly to Boyd. “Now, son, I came to you because I knew you was gonna lead better than any other shitkicker in these hills or out of them. And I don’t give a damn what you do behind closed doors, but what I do not appreciate is you bringin’ your bedroom dramatics out here into dangerous territory.”

“What are you talking about?” Jerry looks between the three of them like maybe he’s the one gone crazy.

Amos snorts, disgusted. “Ain’t it obvious?” He kicks at the ground, scuffing dirt in their direction, but not so far it hits them. Raylan smirks at the man, hoping it looks terrifying. He’s going to have to do better than that. “These two are screwin’.”

“No shit? Seriously?” Raylan wants to laugh again. Terence is adorable.

Jerry frowns like they’re playing a joke on him. “What about Miss Ava?”

“What about her? She’s in on it. Bet her pussy gets a lot of attention between the two--”

Boyd stops that shit in its path, almost growling, “You best quit while you’re ahead, Amos White, and leave Ava out of the rest of this conversation.”

“You ain’t gonna deny it?” Kincade cries, though Raylan was almost sure the boy had been onto them for some time.

“Well, I hardly can, son, and have anyone believe it. We ain’t been quite as careful as we could be about keeping this secret, but it wasn’t ever one I desired to hold on to for long. We figured people would find out when they wanted.”

“You figured,” Raylan grumbles. He still feels like his head’s been rended from his body, like his limbs are gone and never coming back. It’s weird, but it’s funny too, and he finding far too much of this shit far too amusing. He looks around at all of them, vision sort of swimming. “I don’t give a flying fuck what any of you think of me.” To his own ears, he sounds a little drunk.

“You’ve never had to,” Kincade snarls. He points hard at Boyd. “He’s had your back from the very first. Marshal Givens can do no fucking wrong. No wonder. Jesus Christ.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know, son,” Boyd says softly. “I know you saw Raylan leave my home in the early hours not a week before today. Just what did you tell yourself he was doin’ there?”

Kincade says nothing.

“You wanted to make an issue of this, you could have done it then. You wanted proof, you could have asked me about it. Have I ever given you the impression you couldn’t talk to me? That I would lie to you? About anything?”

Raylan finally does laugh. “Now you’re laying it on a little thick, don’t you think, Boyd? I mean this isn’t ‘are you skimming off the top’ or ‘are you plannin’ to murder somebody?’. This is ‘are you screwin’ the Marshal?’ This is real shit.”

“Hush, Raylan, that isn’t helping.”

“Helping what? Why do you care if they fucking approve of your choices?”

Boyd turns to him now, brushing his shoulder with gentle fingers. “Raylan, I know you don’t like to think your actions have consequences, but I know that you know that they do. My choices impact everyone in the compound, so do yours now, so does everyone else’s. This is the world we’re living in. That don’t mean I can’t make the choices I want, but it does mean I have to justify them.”

Raylan snorts. His head is aching, it feels too light, real weird. He doesn’t fucking care.

“Consequences,” Amos says. “That’s damn right, Boyd. You let him push his way onto this mission when you knew he wasn’t fit--”

“I did not _know_ that.”

“But you measured the possibility.”

“What is even the matter with him?” Kincade asks, anger still in his voice. 

“Raylan’s a liability,” Raylan hears himself murmur, head in his hands. He laughs again, breathy and desperate. “He’s losing his shit.”

“Raylan, shut up,” Boyd hisses, then turns back to Amos. Not bothering to answer the boy. “Raylan is also a damn fine shot and he knows these woods--”

Amos rolls his eyes. “Not so well as you or me or--”

“He still knows them, dammit. Better than some. He’s shot more dead on this outing than you or I.”

“He didn’t _do_ anything but look for them.” 

Raylan is getting tired of this shit, liability or no. Boyd had no idea. He’d made sure.

“Because that’s what I told him to fucking do, Amos. You were half so good as Raylan at following my orders--”

“Oh, is _that_ why he gets you goin’, then boy? Following _orders_ \--”

And Raylan is up and on him before half a thought passes through his brain. He’s spitting out curses and clawing his fingers around the old man’s neck. Breathing hot words about his fucking looks in the mine and on the road and passing judgment and not being good enough.

Boyd’s arm comes fast around his waist and jerks him back, knocking some wind out of his lungs. He presses himself very close to Raylan and says in his ear, “You need to calm down, Raylan.”

Raylan shakes his head. “I can’t,” he says, voice and hands shaking. “Can’t. I can’t--”

“You need to, darlin’. You’re freaking everybody out.”

Amos straightens himself up. Eyes wary, but calm. “My apologies,” he says to them both. “That was out of line.”

“Damn right it was,” Raylan growls. 

He pulls forward but Boyd holds him back then spins him around, planting himself between Raylan and the rest of the men. “I know your head is all over the place at this moment, and you are not thinking about what it is you’re saying or strangling. But you need to promise me you’re going to shut the hell up for the rest of this discussion, Raylan, or I’m going to knock you out.”

“Try it,” Raylan snarls, looking beyond Boyd, over his shoulder at Amos. That fucking--Boyd’s palm is on his cheek, warm and almost gentle and Raylan looks at him.

Boyd doesn’t say anything right away and they just stare at each other and Boyd’s whole body moves with the weight of his breathing, slow and calm. Raylan’s follows suit, automatically, and they just breathe together until Boyd smiles softly and asks, “You really wanna make me hit you? After what we just found out?”

Raylan frowns. He doesn’t know what Boyd’s talking about. “What did we find out?” 

“You’re in love with him, man,” Terence says like he should know. “You don’t remember yellin’ at him all about how you can’t lose him?”

Raylan opens his mouth, still frowning, hesitates, then can’t come up with anything to say other than, “Shit.” He looks at Boyd, who’s smiling back at him now like he’s just being cute instead of frighteningly off the rails. “You have to tell Ava,” he says, and he hopes he doesn’t sound too crazy.

Boyd grins. “There’s a list a mile long of all the things I have to tell Ava,” he says and he’s got his hands evenly braced on Raylan’s shoulders, no longer pushing him back. His lips quirk to the side as he asks, “You don’t think she’ll feel left out, do you?”

Raylan smiles and shakes his head. “No, I don’t.” He leans in and kisses Boyd real soft on the side of his crooked mouth.

The younger boys make a noise, but it’s Amos who says, “I don’t give a damn what you do in the privacy of your own goddamn home, Crowder, but do not put that shit up in my face. I don’t want to fucking see it.”

Raylan’s eyes flash and Boyd has to stop him again from advancing, giving him a look and saying, “I’m serious about knocking you out, son. Now, don’t say another word unless it’s something nice to me.”

Raylan pushes off him and goes to lean against a tree. He watches all the men’s eyes go from wary or afraid, to mildly uncomfortable or grossed out. Raylan glowers at them. 

He doesn’t want them to fucking see it either. He just couldn’t stop himself and he really doesn’t like that. He feels his hands shaking under his elbows, where he’s tucked them. His head is pounding and his mouth is dry and now he keeps seeing Boyd strung up, at the mercy of the dead or the Harvest or goddamn Dickie Bennett, which is dumb as hell. He tries blinking it away and it doesn’t work and he shakes his head, but that only makes it ache harder.

He knows he’s at the end of his rope here. He just wants Boyd to get this conversation over with so they can fucking leave.

Boyd looks into the eyes of every man standing there. “Now, I will admit that I was unaware--however rightfully or wrongfully--of the particularly dangerous state of mind that Raylan was in prior to our departure on this mission. And that perhaps I should have not allowed him to travel with us, but can any of you say that you knew better than I? That you thought as we were driving out, ‘Well, damn, that Raylan looks like total shit right now, maybe he should stay behind?’”

No one answers, but their expressions grow increasingly uncomfortable.

“That’s right,” Boyd says. “We’re living in a time when bad shit happens to _everyone_. I told you when we set out just one of the terrible things that have happened to this man and yesterday he brought them to the very front of his mind so that we, so that _we all_ , I am saying, could be safer with his knowledge. I’d like to think every single one of us can appreciate that kind of sacrifice. Can you blame him for not adequately predicting the toll such an act would take?”

Raylan thinks Boyd is laying it on a bit thick again, but the boys--maybe not Amos--seem to be eating it up. Maybe they’re used to it now. Maybe that’s what they like about Boyd, the King of fucking Harlan County. He’s a speechifier. He makes you feel things. Raylan starts to laugh, silently, nearly hysterical, and he slides down the tree at his back to the ground.

Boyd turns at the sound of crumpling leaves and throws Raylan a look of profound concern. “Jesus, darlin’,” he says, apparently throwing all caution of pet names to the wind now that the cat’s out of the bag and Raylan laughs harder, wondering when he’s going to stop thinking in terrible cliches. 

Boyd strides over to Raylan and forces his head between his knees until he breathes easier. He keeps his hand in Raylan’s hair as he says, presumably still staring them down, “Do you honestly think that what Ava and I do with Raylan, or what we don’t do, or what we feel about him is going to have a negative impact on the survival of this community?”

There is silence for a moment, but it’s not as long as Raylan was expecting. He hears Terence say, “No, man, I think it’s amazing. You guys, Miss Ava, too. You got love. It’s real. That’s special.”

Raylan looks up and the boy is smiling at him, real big, like he’s excited about it.

“Well, thank you, son,” Boyd says softly. He’s surprised too. They were both expecting something grudging, feet dragging and low mumbles of dissonance.

“I agree,” Jerry says suddenly. “I mean, I don’t know I want to see it, either. But the Marshal’s a good man. Everybody’s got bad days. And I ain’t never heard of Boyd and Ava steering us wrong before now.” He pauses and asks, “You always felt this way for him?”

The question is directed at Boyd, who smiles and replies, “It’s complicated.”

“It must be,” Terence murmurs. Amos snorts, but the boy goes on to say, “Before, you got to hide that shit. I remember, was a girl, came up to the holler not long ‘fore things started. She loved this other girl, was married to a man who beat her. They’d come to be together, but Mister Limehouse found out an’ he didn’t like that either. Said it was ‘cause he didn’t let the girls in to break no marriage vows, but I knew it was ‘cause he didn’t like that shit. I always thought those girls, they shoulda been able to have what they wanted.”

“Now that, I’d pay to see,” Amos says.

“Shut up, man,” Terence turns to him. “It ain’t no different.”

“I have always felt the way I do about Raylan,” Boyd says. “I’ve told him before and I’ll tell you all right now, it was was the world we were living in, that stopped us. The things around us and the things we saw and wanted and thought we needed for ourselves. That world is gone, boys. You gonna stop us now that we’ve lost everything else?”

“No, sir,” Terence says immediately and Jerry follows suit. Kincade and Amos fall in after, but just as grudging as Raylan assumed they would all be.

“Thank you,” Boyd says and his fingers in Raylan’s hair ease, just a bit.

He wasn’t sure what they would do either.

 

Boyd tells the men to walk a ways ahead of them, out of the copse of trees. He says they’ll be right behind.

When they are out of earshot, he turns to Raylan, who still looks pale and shaky. There is an echo of the panic and discord Boyd had seen in his face still there. He wants it gone. He doesn’t know how to accomplish that, not in the long run.

“Raylan, I believe, it would be fair here to say that you’ve given us cause to worry quite a bit since your arrival and return to our lives. You’d agree with that assessment?” Boyd finds himself speaking very quietly. He kneels down in front of where Raylan has slid down the tree trunk at his back, where he still sits, like he was tossed there.

Raylan nods. He hasn’t said anything since Boyd told him not to. 

He sighs, unable to hold it back. “You been a worry before, and I swear, we don’t care. We--” he breaks off. He doesn’t want to say that without Ava. Not the first time. “But darlin’, you’re scaring the shit out of me. And you know not much can do that.” 

Raylan smiles, not bitter, but not happy either. It’s like he’s not sure what else to do with his face. His eyes are tired. He looks like he needs to sleep for a week. “Me, and the dead, and Bo Crowder’s ire,” he says.

“Well, at least one of those things ain’t coming around no more and you seem to have the dead taken care of, so I guess all we have to do now is get your shit together and I’ll be in the clear.”

Raylan leans forward and grins now and it’s almost frightening, because there’s no humor at all behind it. “Free of fear?” He laughs, low, and dips his eyelids, then looks back up real fast. “Wouldn’t that be nice.”

Boyd frowns. “I remember you told me once you were just afraid of the one thing, Raylan.”

“Yeah, but I was lyin’ about what it was, really. And now it’s the same, but it’s so much bigger, Boyd.” He closes his eyes and lets his head fall to Boyd’s shoulder. “I’ve never thought of myself as a fearful man. Then again, I never thought of myself as an angry one, either.”

Boyd wraps his hand around the back of Raylan’s neck. It’s feels clammy and damp with sweat, though the temperature is cool for the season. “What’s bigger, darlin’? What was it you meant to say when you said the mine?”

“Ghosts,” Raylan whispers. “Ghosts upon ghosts upon shadows and fire and--”

“Okay,” Boyd says. “Don’t, Raylan. Let’s just walk back, then ride back, and we’ll be home, with Ava and Loretta and you’ll be--”

“I’m losing it, Boyd,” Raylan says, lifting his head. They’re very close to each other now and Raylan’s eyes are dark and wounded. “I can’t stop the shit that’s coming out of my mouth. I don’ even remember what I said, I can’t--I don’t know what to do.”

Boyd’s jaw tightens and he thinks very hard for a few seconds before he responds. “I told you, Raylan, I always strive to be honest with you. So, I have to say, darlin’, I don’t know either, but I do know that you haven’t lost and are not currently losing anything. I won’t let you lose anything more than you already have, all right?”

Raylan doesn’t answer, but he does pull himself forward and into Boyds arms, pressing close and breathing in like a dry heave. Boyd draws his lips to Raylan’s forehead. “We’re not going to let you go, Raylan,” he says.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raylan and Boyd make it back to the compound, with the past nipping at Raylan's heels. Ava is ready to take care of them both.

Ava spends the evening scrubbing dishes in the Barbecue, working off her anxiety that the boys haven’t come back yet, when they were due in the afternoon. She knows shit comes up, she knows plans aren’t followed to the letter, but she’s always been a woman with a good imagination and these days a mind given to flights of fancy hurts just as often as it helps.

She thinks of them dead on the road, half of them bit, overrun by a hoard out of nowhere, days ago and she wouldn’t have known. She grits her teeth and scrubs harder.

It’s another hour before they come back. Dusk is painting the sky behind them as they roll across the bridge and Ava rushes out to meet them along with pretty much everybody within earshot of the gate. 

They all want to see the haul, but Ava’s barely thinking about it. She just wants to see her boys.

The three trucks stop as they reach the ring of people come to greet them. Boyd isn’t driving like he was when they left. Raylan’s climbing slowly out of one of the cabs and Boyd’s sliding out from the seat next to him. Ava frowns and walks forward, not too fast. “Everything all right?” 

Raylan looks pale and gaunt, like a breeze might blow him over and Boyd’s eyes are too grave. Raylan looks at her like she’s an oasis in the desert, like all he wants to do is fall at her feet. Boyd slides a hand under his elbow, like he might need to be held up, but neither respond.

“What’s the matter?” she cries too loudly then bites her tongue. They do try not to raise many panics around here.

The men are all out of the truck now and they’re all looking at her funny. Not all funny in the same way, though. Terence, Anna’s grandson, who was one of those who were here before they arrived, is smiling at her like they’ve got a secret. Jerry, who she barely knows, but is a wicked shot, has got a frown on his face like she’s pulled one over on him. Kincade’s looking like he just can’t understand something--though that’s hardly unusual--and Amos, who she’s never liked much on account of his sometime friendship with Bowman looks like he wants to spit at her feet, but knows he’d lose his tongue over it.

“Raylan’s come down with something,” Boyd says so everyone can hear. It’s a lie of some kind. Raylan looks sick, but he’s also putting on that face he gets when Boyd is doing something he not at least fifty percent behind. “My best guess,” Boyd continues, “is that it’s just a bad cold. But we’re gonna put him in my house and away from everybody for a bit. ‘Til we know some more.”

“He didn’t get bit, did he?” Jake asks from behind her. Stupid question. They’d have called for Travis by now.

Boyd’s eyes flash, but he’s too good to lay into the boy just now, even though she can tell he’s close to the end of his patience. “No one was bit, no one was hurt, and we got what we needed. Every able bodied person should come help unload. Kincade, watch how some gets handled. Only ammo to the children. Terence, you’re in charge of organizing it, tell ‘em all where it goes. I’ll be around later to check. I’m going to see about Raylan.”

Terence smiles again and Ava wants to ask the boy what’s so damn funny. He says, “No problem, Boyd. You go on.”

Raylan rolls his eyes and pulls away from Boyd, though his hand is shaking as he lets his fall to his side. He starts walking, and she thinks he’s coming to her, but his eyes sort of slide off of her and he keeps walking, straight towards their house, and not his own. 

She turns swiftly back to Boyd. “Just what the hell--”

“Wait,” Boyd says quietly, but his finger is up in the air and almost pointed at her, a gesture he’s lately borrowed from Raylan, but only in times of intense stress. He walks up to her fast and pulls her away from the people gathering around the trucks. She sees ahead of them Loretta must have heard of the group’s return. Raylan has pulled the girl into a tight embrace, which she returns enthusiastically, then less so as Raylan continues to hold her close.

“Baby, what happened?” She reaches for him, drawing her hand up from his arm to his shoulder. 

Boyd leans into her touch, but his eyes are still on Raylan. “Nothing,” he says, then frowns. “Everything, too. Baby, I got a lot to tell you.”

“Is he really sick?”

Boyd gives her a look, full of pride and love, and he smiles. “Not like I said. But we’ve got to help him, Ava.”

She thinks of Raylan’s face before they left. The way he was walking, with purpose, but as though climbing into that truck was like a death sentence or a bullet coming at him slowly. “He shouldn’t have gone, should he?”

“Maybe not,” Boyd says. “Though I fail to see how I could have stopped him. And... I don’t regret--” He breaks off, shaking his head. “I’ll tell you after we take care of him.”

Ava watches Loretta pull away, looking worried now, but Raylan shakes his head and walks on to the house. “What does he need?”

“To give us somethin’,” Boyd says, then shrugs, huffing out a laugh that sounds just a little desperate. “Unless he just falls asleep. I don’t know how he’s walkin’ on his own.”

Ava huffs too, more put out than amused and shoves at him. “I’m not sure you could be more mysterious if you tried, baby. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m just gonna go ask Raylan. Maybe he’ll give me a straight goddamn answer.”

Boyd doesn’t laugh, but he gives her a look, like on another day he’d think about it.

“Well, he ain’t sick,” Loretta says when Ava comes up to her a moment later. Raylan’s disappeared already into the house. She eyes Boyd. “He’s havin’ those troubles. Like the night with the fire.”

Boyd looks grave again. “Very like,” he says and Ava almost shoves him again for not coming out and saying it.

She clenches her jaw thinking about the looks those men gave her. “He did...that in front of the boys?”

“He did,” Boyd replies. 

Ava looks at Loretta. “You gonna be okay by yourself for a few more days?”

The girl shrugs. “I ain’t so far from you or anybody else I can’t ask for something if I need it. I just... want him to be okay.”

“Don’t we all, child,” Boyd says and lays his hand on her shoulder. 

Loretta smiles at him and says, “I got the doctor lookin’ in on me too quite a bit lately. I’m sure he’ll tell you, anything’s amiss.”

Ava gives Boyd a look before she says, “I’m sure he will, honey.”

When Ava reaches their home, she comes in the door to find Raylan standing beside the bed, looking down, hat on the pillow, the collar of his shirt loosened like the room is too warm. He looks at her again like all he wants to do is hold her, so she crosses the room and walks right into his arms.

He actually has them held out for her, which is unusual, but very welcome. He whispers her name into her hair. It’s the first word she’s heard him speak since they returned. Ava puts both hands on either side of his face and looks into his tired eyes. “You got somethin’ to say?” she asks.

Raylan shakes his head and kisses her soundly, pulling her closer, up and into his arms. He is slow but strong, desperate like his eyes, his lips almost bruising in their intensity, his arms and fingers tight across her back and in her hair. He pulls away for just a moment to answer, “Wanna show you first.”

She smiles softly as he starts to pull her clothes off, letting his mouth roam across her increasingly bare skin. “All right,” she says and lets her fingers comb through his hair. 

He groans at the touch and pulls her up fast again, laying her down on the bed. Ava looks across his shoulder to see Boyd standing in the doorway, his expression still grave and too dark for her liking.

She feels very warm now, where Raylan’s touched her and where he hasn’t yet and Boyd looks cold and far away. “Come over, baby,” she tells him smiling. “Let him show us.” 

Raylan’s mouth is on her left breast, licking and sucking on her nipple and she closes her eyes and arches her back, moaning. His hand is in her panties, pressing down, palming her clit. When she opens her eyes Boyd is there, still standing, but now next to the bed. 

Raylan’s got her panties pushed aside and he’s about to bend low. Ava’s ready for him, panting with it, but Boyd puts his hand on the back of Raylan’s neck and he freezes in place. Ava writhes with her want, but she looks deep into Raylan’s eyes as he’s hovering over her, waiting, because Boyd wants him to. 

They’ve never done this before. They let him do what he wants. They always tell him, “yes,” they never say, “wait,” they never think the word, “no.”

But there is something in Raylan’s eyes that make her wonder, was this what he wanted, but couldn’t ask for? Was it what he needed and they never knew?

Boyd’s fingers are loose around Raylan’s neck, but Raylan arches up into the touch and Boyd’s grip tightens. “Say it now,” Boyd tells him. His voice is rough, like he’s forced the words through his teeth, but he doesn’t sound angry. He sounds like he can’t wait a second longer.

Raylan’s gaze shifts from her to Boyd, straining to meet his eyes out of the corner of his own. He looks wild, cornered, like a rabbit in a snare.

“Wasn’t I didn’t think you should go, Boyd,” he finally says, very soft. “I didn’t _want_ you to. Didn’t know how to say it. Didn’t know what I meant.” Raylan turns back to Ava, and he looks wounded, but his voice is strong, doesn’t falter. “I love you,” he says. “Both. So much, I can’t lose you. I never-never meant for that to happen again. It does, it’s gonna break me.”

Ava pushes herself up, bracing her hands on the mattress to get close enough to Raylan to kiss him. He parts his lips slowly for her, as though relearning the action. She pulls back after a sweet moment and breathes into his mouth. “It won’t, baby.” Not either one, but she’s not going to quibble with him now.

Boyd’s hand is much tighter across Raylan’s neck than it was before. Ava can’t read him right now. There’s something in his face, love or pride or protectiveness, possession and it’s rending his expression like he’s about to weep. She’s never seen him shed a tear in her life, but she thinks if he was going to, now might be a good time to do it.

Instead, he says, very low to Raylan, “Good. Now fuck her.”

When they are together, they are about Raylan, have been for a long time. And they’re careful. 

Ava is convinced she can no longer bear a child to term, but that doesn’t mean she can’t conceive--though she hasn’t in a very long time. Before, she was on the pill and never worried about it. But things are different now, so they get each other off in different ways much more often lately and save the fucking for special occasions.

She thinks if there ever was a truly special occasion, this would be it. And, she hasn’t had a cock inside her in months. She hasn’t had Raylan’s in years and years and she’d be lying if she said she didn’t miss it.

She helps him with his belt, button, and zipper, their fingers working fast together. Boyd doesn't move. She hears herself making little noises of excitement, quiet moans and tiny, squeaking grunts of pleasure as his hands pull off her panties altogether. They don't bother slipping his jeans off all the way. 

Raylan is silent, but his eyes are speaking volumes. He looks almost afraid, until Boyd loosens his fingers and slides them into Raylan's hair. 

Then he makes a sound like he did when they woke him last from his nightmares, like an animal, or a babe, lost and alone. Boyd hushes him. Ava leans up and kisses him softly, guiding him. They sigh together, with their lips locked, as he pushes up and into her.

Her breath catches and she reaches up to Raylan's face. He closes his eyes to her touch as he begins to move, slow, but more confident than she might have expected. She keeps her own eyes open and on Boyd as the sweet pressure slowly builds and she feels warm, then blazing heat, like flames licking her all up and down her body. 

She hasn't felt so full in so long and she feels the past in Raylan, times almost forgotten, that felt so hard once, so terrible. She knows now they were no such thing. They were golden even when tarnished. Though now they are green and bright, especially when she's looking into Boyd's eyes.

She doesn't look away, even when Raylan is moving faster, rutting up hard into her and she's crying out in loud moans and stuttering gasps. She gets her hands up further, into Raylan's hair, and her fingers twine with Boyd's, which are still there, as though he's holding their man steady.

Maybe he is.

Her orgasm breaks across her, rushing all up inside, like a strong tide roaring through a sea cave. Raylan pulls back, perhaps with the idea of physical contraception in mind, but Boyd's hands, at his hair still, and reaching down to his waist, keep him in place. He comes a moment later, a broken cry torn from his throat, and it fills her up with a sleepy warmth as he softens inside her.

She blinks her eyes and Boyd is talking in his ear. Raylan's bent over her, hands braced at either side of her shoulders. His eyes are closed.

"We want all of you," Boyd says. "No flinching, Raylan. No pulling back."

Raylan’s shaking his head. “You never asked for that before,” he says. “I don’t know--I can’t--”

“We think you can,” Boyd says softly. “We think it’s what you want, Raylan.”

“It is,” he’s speaking like it’s a confession, like something shameful. “But don’t-don’t ask me. I can’t--”

“Stop saying that,” Boyd tells him. Ava’s not sure she’d ever heard him say it before, but she wonders how often he’s thought such a thing.

“I don’t _know_ if I can do what you’re asking.” There’s so much pain in his voice. Tears burn in Ava’s eyes over it and they fall out of the corners of her eyes and dampen the hair at her temples. He touches the wetness there. He frowns deeply. “Don’t cry,” he says. “Don’t shed no tears for me.”

“I love you, Raylan,” she says. “Why wouldn’t I?”

He takes a ragged breath. “I died in Louisville, Ava. You’re crying over a ghost.” He turns to Boyd. “I breathed in their ashes and they burned all my insides, Boyd. I can’t love like that again. A-and what happened after--a dead man walked out of that city--”

Boyd pushes Raylan onto the bed next to Ava, climbs right on top of him and takes Raylan’s wretched face in his hands. “Darlin’, that is bullshit. You ain’t the ghost, Raylan. They are. It wasn’t you that died, it was everything around you. We’re living in a world full of ghosts and real dead men that walk, and they tear at us and they wake us in the night, and they bite and scratch and they come at us in unholy hordes, but we are still alive. We keep living because that’s what people fucking do, asshole.”

“Boyd--” Raylan begins to say. His eyes are wide and Ava doesn’t think he wants to argue.

But Boyd shakes his head vehemently. “Do not speak to me again about how you have died, Raylan. It’s a damn lie and there’s a recklessness that goes hand in hand with that attitude that I cannot stomach--not from anyone in my compound. There’s a shame in it, too. You ain’t honoring anyone’s memory and you--”

He’s silenced by Raylan’s kiss, sudden and fierce. When Raylan pulls away, he gives Boyd a sincere eye, his brows raised, like he’d challenge Boyd to call him a liar a second time. “You’re right,” he says. 

He brushes his fingers across Ava’s arm, catches her eye and attempts a smile. It’s too weak to be sly or charming, like he can so often be, but it’s honest and Ava thinks she might love it best of all his smiles. “I love you,” he says. “I’m sorry. Please, be patient with me.”

“Baby,” she says, drawing his face to her with the open palm of her hand. “When have we been anything but patient?” She kisses him now, soft. She wants one too. His lips are gentle, almost careful.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“We got nothing but patience. Nothing but time,” Boyd tells him, taking his turn again. “Take all you need, Raylan.”

“Thank you,” Raylan breathes.

Boyd pulls away. “Don’t do that,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s just us three. It ain’t me and her and you, darlin’. It’s us now.” 

He strokes Raylan’s hair, then, and tells to him to lie back. Ava pulls herself close to him and Boyd slides around to his other side. They whisper small things to each other, which vegetables are right for harvesting, repairs on the bridge set for the next week, and Jake’s fool mouth. Raylan closes his eyes and drifts off, a small smile tugs at his lips.

They often talk around him like this, not about him--at least until he’s sleeping. Ava thinks he likes it, thinks the night treats him better when he falls asleep this way, because it’s small and it’s safe, and it’s not anything he has to engage in. If he’s got an opinion, and he’s awake enough, he’ll voice it. 

But most often, he just listens, and the routine of it, the normality, lulls him. It’s only after he’s sleeping that they lie together and talk about him because they worry so much and love him so much more. They talk about him now and him when Ava loved him before, and all the way back to when Boyd loved him from the first. 

Months ago, when it was cold outside but warm and cozy in, after a night of strong passions and few words between the three of them, Boyd told her that he always thought Raylan didn’t talk about things like love or hate or anger because he felt them so deeply. 

“He sees Arlo in being that way,” Boyd told her. “He thinks he’s got to keep it bottled, cause all he’s ever seen of it is an eruption. When we were young he’d shake with it, he tried so hard to keep it down.”

“His anger?” she’d asked.

“Everything,” Boyd said. 

Ava doesn’t wonder that when they pinned him down finally to say the things he’d confessed to them tonight, that he’d been wrecked to do it and then exhausted after. To Raylan, every word felt truly and spoke truly, was a mighty push, a special effort, even something to be cherished.

In the old days, Ava thinks she would have hated that, was on the way to when they fell apart, at least. Now, she doesn’t know if her newfound patience is because of Boyd, or if she would have be more forgiving even without him in this new world. She doesn’t care to think about life, or anything, without Boyd anyway. 

She looks at Boyd now, at his eyes fixed on Raylan’s face, at the sincere concern there, no longer hidden away. “What happened, baby?”

“It was nothing,” he answers so quietly. “It should have been nothing, but he--” Boyd looks up. “He told me about what happened after Louisville burned. He didn’t want to, but I-I’m so mad at him he didn’t tell us before.”

Ava takes his hand. “Tell us what?”

And he tells her, about the Harvest, he called them, about Raylan’s shock and his guilt and how he couldn’t stop the story until he finished. He tells her about the trip, and how Raylan’s eyes were distant and strange, and he was jumpy and couldn’t sleep and the boys all knew something was up.

He tells her about the watch and how he finally got Raylan to relax, then he talks about today and the bunker and the trip wire.

“They were all laughing--it was funny, but in a way that everyone knew the danger,” he says. “But Raylan didn’t laugh. I was waiting for it, his quiet laugh, the one where you know he doesn’t actually think the joke is funny, but it didn’t come, and I swung around and saw his face. He was white as a sheet. I couldn’t tell if he’d drawn a breath since that wire strung me up and when they got me down, he wasn’t breathing either, he was just talking. Talking and talking and not seeing me, that I was all right, or hearing me call his name--not that I could tell. I don’t think he remembers what he said--half of it the boys didn’t understand, things from a long time ago, about me and him, and you too. And then he said...” Boyd pauses and sighs. “He said what we already knew. He loves us and he’s afraid to lose us--lose anything else. He said he couldn’t. He said that so many times.”

Ava drops her eyes to Raylan. She runs her fingers through his hair and he shifts in his sleep, breathing soft, mouth parted. “Baby, I could have told you that much.”

“Could you?” He shifts too, drawing her further into his arms and letting Raylan’s head fall to her lap, where he instinctively curls around her.

“Well, not the stuff about what happened to him.” She twists to look into his face. “He hurt your pride too much for you to see, but I knew why he said you shouldn’t go. I was waiting for him to screw his courage and tell us--but I guess he really didn’t understand.”

“Not ‘til it all came pouring out of him,” Boyd says quietly. “You’re making me look bad here, Baby. How’d you know?”

Ava lets out a long sigh. “He’s doing the same thing with Loretta now she says she’s strong enough to take her turn on the wall again. She’s probably right, but Raylan’s gonna hold out ‘til he don’t have no more good excuses.” She frowns down at him, feeling relief at the peace she sees in his face. “He doesn’t just think he’s got to keep himself bottled up, he’s got to keep everything that way--or as close to it as he can--or it’s his fault things go wrong.”

“That’s just as much bullshit as dying in Louisville.”

“Sure is. And we’ll just have to set him straight on that too,” Ava says, relaxing back into her man, but in the next moment he stiffens. “What?” she asks softly, exhaustion in her voice.

“You said it,” Boyd’s murmuring, almost to himself, “he said it too, but I-I forgot. Raylan,” he calls softly, sliding out from under her and down the bed. “Raylan.” 

He lays a hand on Raylan’s shoulder and it only takes half a shake to wake him, only a little startled. He smiles slowly, the wariness leaving his eyes with a blink or two, lost in sleep. “Hmm?” 

Boyd takes Raylan’s face in his hands tenderly. “Raylan, I love you,” he whispers.

Raylan smiles and it’s beautiful. “Okay, Boyd.”

 

Raylan wakes with a weight on his chest and warmth at his back.

He wakes slow, but remembers, realizes quickly, he’s not woken in Louisville. He’s home, with Ava and Boyd, and it’s Boyd’s head resting on his chest. It’s Boyd’s hair, grown out in all directions, tickling his nose, smelling of the fire and sweat and sex and even, just slightly, dust from the road.

Neither of them had washed after coming home.

Home.

Raylan stirs and draws his hand up to Boyd’s head, combing lightly through his hair to rest, comforting, just about his ear.

Boyd sleeps longer than he used to, Raylan thinks anyway. He didn’t start staying here until after Boyd swallowed all that poison. But he was sick for weeks. He lost weight. He looked slightly green or deathly pale or dark under the eyes for a long time after he stopped puking. Raylan supposes all that burns away with the fever if you suck it out yourself, but Boyd took that on for Loretta and he pretends it wasn’t as bad as it was.

He wasn’t anywhere near death, but if things in the compound had been worse, if the winter had been harder, if Boyd was on his own, he could have been. Raylan doesn’t like to forget that, or what Boyd did for Loretta. 

He remembers that night, after she’d fallen limp in his arms and they’d put her to bed, Raylan went back to their place, where they’d decided to put Boyd, since he’d retched and then fainted himself even in the other room of their own house, unable to be near the fever. He’d pressed his back against the wall and stared at Boyd in his bedroll, with Boyd’s tired eyes staring right back as his stomach cramped.

“Why? Why did you do that?” That was the only thing running through his head.

“You’d rather I didn’t?” he’d returned weakly. “She was just staring at it. She didn’t know what to do.”

Raylan was shaking his head. There was something about it, at the time, he just didn’t understand. He was still thinking, why?

“She’s family now,” Boyd said. “I love that girl like you do.”

The sickness is a lingering one. The doctor, Travis, still looks at Boyd hard, murmurs things at him under his breath like, “Take it easy.” It makes Raylan scowl.

Boyd was fine to go on that trip, he’s healthy now, but he sleeps like the dead still and he stays asleep until someone wakes him.

Ava stirs too and wakes quickly, giving him a warm smile, a pat on the cheek, and a kiss before she slips out from underneath them. “Let him sleep,” she murmurs. “Everybody went out gets a day of rest, he said so last night. I’ll tell the others at breakfast.” 

Raylan is about to speak, making moves to slip out too.

“No, baby, you stay here with him. I’ll bring you back something good, okay?”

He smiles at her and nods. He leans into the pillows at his back and huffs a breath of laughter when Boyd follows him, curling closer, and mumbling nonsense in his sleep. 

He thinks of the day he met Loretta on the road and how she’d woken him up. He’d been reeling, still from Louisville, from what happened after, from walking through the streets of Lexington and through the halls of the courthouse and seeing only death, knowing everyone he could have found there was gone. 

He’d been far away from himself. He’s not even sure if he’d really been looking for Boyd until he realized that was where she was headed. He’d just been walking, unconsciously, towards Harlan. He doesn’t know what he’d have done if Loretta hadn’t brought him here.

Raylan drifts back into sleep. 

He dreams in the morning kind of way that’s continuous, but broken up by glimpses of the waking world, a turn against the pillow, a strong whiff of Boyd, his hands, his hair, his weight. He dreams Winona’s put the baby on him, but she’s heavier than she used to be, not any bigger though. She smiles her big smile at him, happy and warm, showing off teeth hard-won with tears. She fists her little fingers in his shirt pulling herself closer to his face.

He turns and Ava is next to him, instead of Winona, and Boyd stirs when she shakes at his shoulder. “Babies, wake up,” she says, her voice full of fondness. “Look what I got you.”

There’s a tray next to her, with the usual oatmeal, in two bowls with dried fruit and only a little brown sugar, but next to it are two tall jars of something bright orange and liquid.

“Is that…” Boyd mumbles, trailing off and sitting up slow, his eyes wide.

“Annie broke out some of those old Tang packets she has. She said we were all like to die of scurvy soon, we don’t get a big dose of vitamin C.”

“What did Travis say?” Raylan asks, shifting as Boyd clamors over him, reaching for one of the jars.

“That we better not tell her you can get just as much from the canned peppers and early broccoli we’ve got now,” Ava says, smiling.

“Damn right,” Boyd murmurs and takes a slow sip, savoring it and grinning wide.

Raylan can’t help it, he leans in fast, pulling Boyd in with his hand around the back of his neck, and kisses his mouth open, tasting the sweetness on his lips and tongue.

Boyd pulls back with a surprised laugh, “You’re gonna make me spill it! Boy, what has got into you?”

Raylan grins. “I’m just glad to be home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More big thanks to my betas who have helped me work and rework this thing over the past year.
> 
> PS I'm not so prolific as I look. I just take FOREVER to finish things.
> 
> Eventually, I'll write more in this series. So look out for that. And thanks for reading!


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